***** Murder: The Leading Cause of Death for Pregnant Women April 23, 2003 By Kim Curtis, Associated Press Writer
..."Violence in intimate relationships is all about power," said Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women. "There are fewer times when you can have power over a woman than when she's pregnant. She's vulnerable. It's an easier time to threaten her."...
Among all murders of women across the country in 2000 -- the most recent yearly statistics available from the U.S. Department of Justice -- more than 33 percent were killed by an intimate partner.
And despite all the joy that pregnancy can bring to a relationship, expectant mothers aren't necessarily spared the danger of being slain.
That's something advocates have known for years, Gandy said.
"There are a lot of dynamics that go on in a relationship that involves violence -- power and control and the need for the abuser to be primary," she said. "A pregnancy can create a sense of possibly losing that primary position."
Homicide was found to be the leading cause of death for pregnant women in Maryland, according to a March 2001 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Using death records and coroner reports, state health department researchers found 247 pregnancy-associated deaths between 1993 and 1998. Among those deaths, 50 were murders. By comparison, homicide was the fifth-leading cause of death among Maryland women. And, nationwide, the maternal mortality rate was just 9.9 percent in 1999, the most recent year for which statistics are available....
The Maryland study reinforced at least two earlier studies that found homicide to be the top killer of pregnant women. In Cook County, Ill., 26 percent of the 95 deaths of pregnant women recorded between 1986 and 1989 were slain. In New York, 25 percent of the 293 deaths among pregnant women between 1987 and 1991 were homicides.
Police records show that homicidal violence cuts across all races and classes.
"There is no profile of what these men look like," Phyllis Sharps [an associate professor at The Johns Hopkins University's school of nursing who researches violence against women] said. "Many are educated, upstanding citizens."
Reprinted with the permission of the Associated Press. Copyright 2003.
<http://www.now.org/issues/violence/043003pregnant.html> *****
***** Expectant Victim Pregnancy Doesn't Protect Women From Abuse - or Murder By Bryan Robinson
April 25 - . . . According to a 2001 study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association, approximately 20 percent of Maryland women who died during pregnancy were murdered. This supported the findings of previous studies in Cook County, Ill., and New York.
Experts and women's advocates are not surprised to find that pregnant women are especially prone to violent deaths. In many cases, pregnant women are killed by their husbands or significant others.
"Most pregnant women are killed by people they know, like husbands or boyfriends," said Pat Brown, a criminal profiler and CEO of the Sexual Homicide Exchange....
Jealous of the Unborn
While pregnancy is supposed to be a happy time, it can aggravate an already troubled relationship undermined by either extramarital affairs or a long history of abuse.
"Her body begins to change," said Sheryl Cates, executive director of the National Domestic Violence Hotline. "There are also hormone changes that a woman experiences. . . . Emotionally, she may cry a lot, which may be irritating and frustrating. If you already have a volatile situation, add those factors [and] you have an escalation of violence. Often, that leads to death."
Sometimes pregnancy can make husbands or boyfriends feel ignored, prompting them to seek gratification elsewhere. Soon, the pregnant wife and unborn child become obstacles, not sources of happiness, and that can lead to premeditated murder.
"There can be an affair going on, where the husband or boyfriend are getting a lack of sexual gratification and they venture out, fall in love and feel like they have to get rid of the wife," said Tod Burke, associate professor of criminal justice at Radford University in Virginia and a former Maryland police officer. "But, there really is no typical motive in cases like these. It really is situational."
The Need for Control . . . or Escape
Despite the various motives, experts say all these killings have a common denominator: a need for control. Pregnancy can make domineering husbands and boyfriends feel like they are no longer powerful and in control, especially in abusive relationships. Murder is the ultimate demonstration of control.
"What we find with men who are violent toward their intimate partner is that he feels that he's lost control or possession over her or her body," said Cates. "He feels that he is not getting the attention that he deserves. He often feels . . . that he's lost his place to the baby." . . .
According to the most recent statistics by the U.S. Department of Justice, more than 33 percent of all the women slain nationwide in 2000 were killed by intimate partners. Some experts suspect that many more pregnant women may be in danger and even dying because they keep their domestic abuse secret.
"It's about shame, and feeling embarrassed," Cates said. "Women want to keep it secret. They want to have the family that everyone dreams of having."
In many cases, she said, the fact that a slain woman or domestic abuse victim was pregnant may never be reported.
"Only 17 states . . . are reporting that a woman was pregnant at the time of death," Cates said. "It's not on the death certificate, so it may mean . . . that women are dying at a much greater rate than we know."
The phone number for National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233).
ABCNEWS' Jay Schadler and John Kennedy contributed to this report. <http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/Primetime/pregnant_murder030425.html> ***** -- Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>